Your Mind Is Not to Be Trusted

Bacon: "Only what has been seen with one's own eyes can be judged." Descartes: "Only what has been rationally analyzed can be judged."

Hume: "Neither what is seen with one's own eyes nor what is rationally analyzed can be judged." Kant: "By combining what is seen with one's own eyes and rational analysis, judgment can be made."

The Buddha: "Only by realizing that what is seen with the eyes is illusion and that rational analysis is mere play of words is it possible to make a meaningful 'judgment'."

Since beginningless time, sentient beings have seen with their own eyes countless people, events, objects, and principles—which of these cognitions has been correct? If cognition were correct, there would be no more afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, nor the suffering of birth, death, and rebirth. How many people possess the capacity for rational analysis? If rational analysis were flawless, how could there still be afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion and the suffering of birth, death, and rebirth?

The Buddha said: "Your mind cannot be trusted; only after attaining Arhatship can your mind be trusted."

Yet even after attaining Arhatship, so much ignorance remains that your mind still cannot be fully trusted.

Countless people trust their own minds, yet that very mind of theirs is like this today and like that tomorrow, constantly changing its views. Until the moment of death, they have scarcely done anything correctly—is such a mind reliable? It is utterly unreliable, yet they remain self-confident until death. Most people who study Buddhism see something good today, study it for a few days, then reject it. After a while, they see something else as good, study it for a few days, then reject it again. Until they are seventy or eighty years old, they still have not found a method that satisfies them, yet they remain very self-confident. If they were truly self-confident, once they affirmed one method, they would not reject or change it again. If one still cannot determine a single practice method and path by fifty or sixty years of age, what hope is there for this lifetime?